The Only Woman I Ever Loved
by Olive Drab
Summary: After the event of Comrades in Arms, Hawkeye feels he owes Margaret an explanation. It's not quite what she expected.


**A/N: Okay, so I've dared to suggest an alternate ending to "Comrades in Arms". I know it's a lot of people's favourite episode and I know a lot of people love the "Hank" letter at the end, so I've probably put a few backs up already! But I like to think maybe Margaret wrote her letter later that night and showed it to Hawkeye the next day. It still fits. The story starts just after Hawkeye's chat with BJ, as he goes across to talk to Margaret – I hope you like it.**

**The Only Woman I Ever Loved**

He limped across the compound, recalling BJ's words a few minutes earlier, 'It sounds like maybe you felt something for her, and it scares you,' he had said. _Close to the truth, Beej,_ he thought, _but not the way you meant it._

Reaching her tent, he knocked softly. "Margaret, it's Hawkeye. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

He thought for a moment she might refuse, but then she opened the door and silently gestured for him to enter.

He loved coming in here. The smells and the lighting were all her. The cushions, the drapes, the oranges and pinks formed a defiant oasis of colour against the grinding dullness of the camp in general. The colours she had chosen were as fiery and strong her personality.

"You have precisely ten seconds to make your apology and leave, after which I intend never to speak to you again except in a professional capacity," she said coldly, her face like stone.

Hawkeye sighed. This was not going to be easy. "Margaret, may I at least sit down? I'm tired, my leg hurts and I think we just need to talk this through. I don't want you to hate me."

She pulled over a chair for him but stayed standing herself, folding her arms and glaring down at him.

"I'm ready," she said. "Talk away. Explain to me, if you can, why you pushed me away so hard and so fast that I practically have whiplash."

"Margaret, I………"

"What the hell is it with you anyway?" she exploded, unable to contain her anger and humiliation any longer. She began to pace, forcing him to twist in his chair to follow her. "You charm your way into a woman's arms – into her bed – and then suddenly you're back to the just good friends routine. Why don't you just grow up? Do you know what they call women who behave the way you do?"

Hawkeye usually knew better than to interrupt Margaret Houlihan in full flow, but he felt his own anger beginning to rise.

"Oh, come on! Don't play the wronged woman - it takes two to tango, you know. We were clinging to each other for comfort, and it lead to something more, and the next thing I know you're stroking my hair and calling me darling and practically picking out the carpets for the apartment! You're hardly subtle yourself sometimes, Margaret."

She paused in her pacing. "That's true," she admitted. "We're both adults; we both knew what we were doing. I was stupid to think there might be more. I guess I'm nothing more than another name on the long list of Hawkeye Pierce's willing female conquests." She gave a bitter little laugh. "My God, you really don't need anyone, do you? What is it in your character that stops you letting people get really close to you?"

She sounded so bitter and so genuinely upset that his anger burned out as quickly as it had flared up. He took a deep breath. _This is why I came_, he thought. _I owe her this._

"Margaret, if you want me to, I'll just apologise and leave. But you deserve more, and I want to try and give you an explanation. Then if you want I'll go away and you can ignore me for the rest of the war. Just hear me out first. Sit down - please."

Margaret was taken aback. She had been ready for a shouting match, or prepared to be gracious and aloof if he offered an apology. She had not been ready for such uncharacteristic – she searched for the word – vulnerability. He looked like a nervous child plucking up the courage to tell his parents he'd broken a favourite lamp. Intrigued, she sat down on her cot and nodded for him to go on, wondering when she had lost the initiative in this suddenly strange conversation, and where it would go next.

"Do you remember Carlye?" he asked.

"The girl from your past who was here for a while?" _What the hell is going on here_, she thought. "Yes, I remember her. I liked her. I remember you were happy while she was here, and I know you were hurting after she left."

He smiled tiredly. "I guess I didn't hide that as well as I thought."

"People who care about you noticed," she said quietly.

"I _was_ hurting after she left," he continued. "And I was happy while she was here. But I was terrified too. Twice in my life, I'd fallen for a girl – the same girl, even. And just like the first time, I wanted to be with her, and at the same time I wanted to be anywhere else except with her. Do you know I even proposed to her? Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I was thinking _don't do this, I don't want this_. God knows what I would have done if she'd accepted."

Margaret shook her head. "Hawkeye, you're confusing me. What is it you're trying to tell me?"

"Don't you see? That's the way I always am with women. I either leave them, or I make it impossible for them to stay with me. I realised that after Carlye." He shifted in the chair, trying to make his injured leg more comfortable. "I started to ask myself all the questions you've just asked. Eventually I spoke to Sidney about it, and I think he helped me to realise something fundamental about myself."

Margaret was not one of the people who had sought out the psychiatrist during his occasional visits to the 4077th, but she knew that Hawkeye had bonded with Sidney as a friend as well as seeking his professional help more than once. _I would be scared to let a psychiatrist get close enough to be my friend,_ she thought suddenly.

"Sidney says that I lost the only woman I ever loved far too early in my life, at a time when I couldn't hope to deal with it." His quiet sentence crashed into her thoughts, another shock in the last day and a half which had seen so many, starting with that awful letter from Donald. But with the shock came an understanding of at least some of what Hawkeye was saying.

"Your mother. You lost your mother when you were a child, didn't you?"

He nodded. "Yeah, and it taught me a lesson in life that I've never been able to shake. As Sidney put it, I believe somewhere very deep down that it's better never to have loved at all than to have loved and lost. The more I think about it, the more I think he's right."

Margaret found herself wanting to go back to the moment he had entered the tent, so that she could play the whole thing differently. She was badly off-balance and trying to gather her thoughts. Sensing her confusion, Hawkeye reached across and took her hand, his gaze also holding hers.

"Listen Margaret," he said, his voice urgent and intense. "It's important to me that you understand this. You know what the saddest day of my life was? Not the day we lost Mom, or the day of her funeral. It was about six months later, on July 4th. We went to the fireworks and the party on the beach, and afterwards I went off with some friends. When I got home, I walked into the house and there was Dad, sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. I said 'you came home early' and you know what he said to me? He said 'I had no reason to stay'." Hawkeye's voice wavered momentarily and he rubbed his free hand angrily over his eyes. "While I'd been out having fun, my father had been sitting in the house alone, his whole world in pieces. And next thing I know, I'm a ten year old boy standing in the kitchen watching my Dad cry like a baby, with no idea what to say or do to make the hurt go away."

He gripped Margaret's hand more tightly. "You asked me last night if I know what it's like to give my heart to somebody. I don't, and I probably never will because I _never_ want to go through what I saw my Dad go through that night and during the months and years afterwards, and I _never_ want to be responsible for putting anyone else through it. And so I chase the nurses and I have a fling and everybody knows that Hawkeye's allergic to any kind of commitment. Sidney called it a defence mechanism, and I guess he's right. I look at BJ and Peg, at the Colonel and his wife (he carefully didn't say 'you and Donald', she noticed), and I'm scared for them, because I know how every love story ends, and it's not a happy ending. All love inevitably leads to loss, Margaret, and the greater the love, the greater the loss. I've been there once, and I don't want to go there again."

She was touched beyond words that he was sharing this with her, but he was turning her world on its head. She seemed to have spent her life searching for a soulmate, and she'd thought she had found one in Donald, but that now seemed to be going as wrong as all the others. Margaret had ached for love as long as she could remember. And now this man she had dared to think might be the one for her was sitting there, telling her that he could never give his heart to her or to anyone. She shook her head helplessly, not knowing what to say to him.

"Margaret, you're a friend," he said gently, "And I value that friendship enough to tell you why it can never be more. I hurt you today and I'm truly sorry, but when I saw the way you were looking at me when we woke up this morning, I got scared just like I always do. I wanted to run and never stop. I can't give you what you're looking for, Margaret. I'm damaged goods."

"I hope one day you meet someone who proves you wrong," she said quietly. "You have so much to give."

"You're the second person to say that to me tonight," he said. "But I don't think I will. You know what? In a few months I'll be older than my mother was when she died. It's a strange feeling. She never got to go grey. She never got to do a lot of things. And I loved her with the unconditional, all-enveloping love of a child. How can anyone compete with that?"

Hawkeye let go of her hand and stood, slightly unsteady on his bad leg. He turned to leave and it was all she could do to stop herself going to him and putting her arms around him.

"But you could have years of happiness with the right woman." she whispered, desperately seeking some kind of reassurance that she hadn't been wrong all her adult life, and he turned back to her. She thought she had never seen a sadder smile.

"Not me. There's a ten year old kid inside me who's not that brave."

The door closed behind him and she sat in her tent, crying for herself, for her wounded, lonely friend and for the only woman he ever loved.


End file.
